Crypto queen Ruja Ignatova’s connections to the Bulgarian underworld are missing

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Image caption, Ruja Ignatova has not been seen since she took a flight from Sofia to Athens in October 2017About the item

• Author, BBC Eye Investigations, Panorama team and The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast
• Role, BBC World Service and BBC News

• 9 minutes ago

In September 2019 a BBC podcast began reporting the extraordinary story of Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian woman wanted by the FBI after scamming investors out of $4.5 billion (£3.54 billion) through her fake cryptocurrency , before vanishing into thin air.

Now we have gone on his trail to try to discover his fate. BBC Eye Investigations and Panorama examined her close links to a suspected Bulgarian organized crime boss and allegations that she was brutally murdered. Did Ignatova enjoy the stolen billions or was she killed by the same people paid to protect her?

Oxford University graduate Ruja Ignatova was born in Bulgaria and raised in Germany, pursuing a successful career in finance before launching the OneCoin cryptocurrency in 2014.

Ignatova convinced millions of people around the world to invest in OneCoin, promising to eclipse the kind of huge returns seen by early Bitcoin investors.

But in reality, Ms. Ignatova – known to many as Dr. Ruja – had created a cleverly disguised investment fraud, without the digital documentation that underlies legitimate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

When German and US investigators closed in on Ms Ignatova in October 2017, she took an early morning Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens, never to be seen again.

Over the past year, BBC World Service’s Eye Investigations and Panorama have tried to find out more about what happened to her and whether she is alive.

The key to this was establishing who his inner circle was.

Richard Reinhardt, who initiated the OneCoin investigation for the US Internal Revenue Service alongside the FBI, spoke to the BBC about a key figure who investigators had never publicly named before.

The Missing Crypto Queen: Dead or Alive?

The CEO of the fake cryptocurrency OneCoin, Ruja Ignatova, is the FBI’s most wanted woman. She stole billions and then she disappeared. New evidence reveals what may have happened. Did she disappear or was she killed?

The BBC believes this is the man who was assigned the role of keeping Ms Ignatova safe: Hristoforos Nikos Amanatidis, commonly known as Taki.

“We were told that supposedly a major drug trafficker was responsible for his physical safety,” Reinhardt told us in his first interview since retiring at the end of 2023.

“Taki came up more than once, it wasn’t an isolated case. It was a recurring theme.”

This fit with information we already had: US government lawyers had said in 2019 that Ms Ignatova’s security chief was a major organized crime figure in Bulgaria, but they had not named him.

“We have evidence that a very important, if not the most prolific drug trafficker of all time in Bulgaria, was closely linked to OneCoin – served as [Ruja Ignatova’s] personal security guard,” an assistant lawyer said.

This was the same “security chief” who, according to another US government lawyer, was “involved in the disappearance” of Ms. Ignatova in court the day before.

Image caption, Richard Reinhardt, the former IRS investigator who opened the OneCoin case

According to Reinhardt, Ignatova was a much more sophisticated criminal than most people realize.

“It’s like a white-collar criminal combined with a drug trafficker or a mobster on steroids.”

This theory appears to be supported by leaked Europol documents, seen by the BBC, which show that – before Ignatova’s disappearance in 2017 – Bulgarian police had established links between her and Taki.

In the documents, police suspect Taki of using OneCoin’s financial network to launder drug trafficking proceeds.

In his native Bulgaria, Taki has an almost mythical status: an El Chapo or Pablo Escobar. He is widely suspected of being the head of a Bulgarian organized crime syndicate and a prolific drug trafficker. He and his associates were investigated there for armed robbery, drug trafficking and murder, but he was never successfully prosecuted for anything.

Image caption, At one time, Taki was the subject of an Interpol “Red Notice”.

“When we talk about Taki, he is the head of the mafia in Bulgaria. He is extremely powerful,” says a former Bulgarian deputy minister, Ivan Hristanov, who investigated allegations in 2022 that Taki ran a criminal network with the help of corrupt officials—and believes that was indeed the case.

“Taki is the ghost. You’ll never see it. We only hear about him. He is speaking to you through other people. If you don’t listen, you disappear from the earth.”

“The only person who can protect her [Ignatova] from all those investigations, including those by foreign agencies, it was Taki.”

The BBC has written to the Bulgarian government regarding allegations involving corrupt officials. He didn’t answer. The prosecutor’s office in the capital Sofia says it “does not cover crimes and people who may have committed crimes.”

Taki is now believed to live in Dubai, where Ms Ignatova bought a luxury penthouse and where her bank accounts received tens of millions of dollars from the OneCoin fraud.

While it is not known how Taki and Ms. Ignatova met, or whether he was involved with OneCoin from the beginning, several sources say they had a close personal relationship and that he was her daughter’s godfather.

A Bulgarian source close to Ignatova told the BBC that she may have paid Taki up to 100,000 euros a month for protection.

There appear to be other financial links between Ms. Ignatova and Taki.

Europol documents mention a complex deal for the sale of a plot of land, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, linking one of Ignatova’s companies to Taki’s wife.

The secret police documents were passed to the BBC by Frank Schneider, Ignatova’s former spy and advisor, now missing.

He told us his old boss worked with “crooks” and “gangsters.”

Image caption, A few months after he spoke to us, Frank Schneider also passed away

When we interviewed Mr. Schneider at his home in France, he was under house arrest, awaiting extradition to the United States in connection with the OneCoin scam. However, he was not willing to reveal names.

“I won’t tell you who, because I have a family… This is real, serious organized crime.”

But in the end, Ignatova’s pimp may have become an aggressor.

In 2022, Bulgarian investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov and his colleagues at the investigative newspaper bird.bg received a police report that a murdered Bulgarian police officer had been found at the home.

In the document, a police informant says he heard Taki’s brother-in-law drunkenly say that Ms Ignatova had been murdered on Taki’s orders in late 2018 and that her body had been dismembered and dumped from a yacht in the Ionian Sea. Stoyanov says this account is “very, very possible.”

The authenticity of the police document has been confirmed by Bulgarian officials, and several of Taki’s criminal associates believe the theory that he had her murdered is true, Stoyanov says.

However, the BBC was unable to independently verify the claim.

The associates’ logic was that the wanted Miss Ignatova became an obstacle for Taki, who wished to eliminate her ties to the OneCoin fraud.

Among these is Krasimir Kamenov, known as Kuro, wanted by Interpol on murder charges.

Mr. Stoyanov says that Kuro told him that he had overheard Taki discussing his criminal business in front of Ms. Ignatova, and when Kuro challenged Taki whether he should do so, Taki responded: “Don’t worry, she’s practically dead. “

Kuro had also claimed to have spoken to the CIA about Taki, including the allegation that Taki had ordered Ms Ignatova’s murder. Sources close to Kuro confirmed to the BBC that this meeting took place in late 2022.

In May 2023, Kuro was murdered in his Cape Town home, along with his wife and two others who worked for him. South African police are still searching for the killers, but former Bulgarian deputy minister Hristanov believes Kuro’s murder is linked to Taki.

“Some people had to be turned away because they knew too much about Taki.

“It was a kind of public execution that felt more like a statement. Be careful who you deal with,” she told us.

Since publishing allegations about Ignatova’s murder, journalist Dimitar Stoyanov says he and his colleagues have faced death threats, forcing him to temporarily leave Bulgaria for the fourth time in his career.

Mr Stoyanov does not claim to know the motive for the alleged murder, but property records show, and eyewitnesses have told him, that since his disappearance, a number of his Bulgarian properties are now used by people linked to Taki.

Image caption: Evidence suggests Ruja Ignatova mansions are now being used by people linked to Taki

Taki was never arrested on charges of having Ignatova killed. His body was never found and investigators say they don’t have enough evidence to prosecute him.

But former IRS investigator Richard Reinhardt believes Ignatova is probably dead. While he hasn’t seen any evidence linking her death to Taki, he says she fits the way drug cartels operate.

“There is no honor among thieves… knowing how violent the cartels are, if [Taki] he thought she was a threat to him…he probably would have taken her out instead of getting caught.”

The BBC wrote to Taki’s lawyers about the allegations in this investigation but they did not respond.

In 2022, Ignatova was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, where she remains to this day.

The BBC team behind the podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen received various sightings and tip-offs about Ms Ignatova’s whereabouts following her alleged murder, including details of a failed police operation in Greece to capture her in 2022.

It could be that the rumors of his death are just another brilliant ploy to throw everyone off track.

If so, as the years go by it will probably become increasingly difficult for her to stay on the run.

“At some point it seems that Elvis Presley is still alive… It’s not very likely,” says Hristanov.

According to Reinhardt, the FBI “doesn’t just keep people inside [the] The top ten of entertainment”. But they would only remove someone if there was “definitive proof” of his death. And given the circumstances, with Ruja Ignatova there may never be one.

And that means that, at least for now, the missing Cryptoqueen remains a hunted woman.

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